Tuesday, April 7, 2009

What's going on here

Aidan is doing extremely well with his implant. He still repeats mama but not sure he gets what it means just yet, he will try to repeat up(sounds like UH), uhoh(sounds like UhUh, and hot(ahhhh). So not perfect but very good. He usually repeats things after me although he has said hot/ah all on his on after getting hot food.

I spoke with our insurance yesterday and found out what the criteria is for Aidan to qualify for a 2nd implant and for them to pay for it. According to their list, he meets all criteria. We go to New Orleans to see the audiologist on the 22nd and will see the Dr as well. He has to see the Dr before they can send in preauthorization for the 2nd implant. If all goes well, and we have no reason to suspect it won't, then we should get approval within 1 mth after our April 22nd appt, so we could know something as early as the middle of May. If it is approved, they will probably schedule surgery sometime this summer.

What happens if insurance decides not to approve? I asked our audiologist this same question. And she told me that Cochlear(the company that puts out the implant) has an appeal team and they will go to bat for us to appeal the decision-I didn't ask how long that process takes as I figured it would be quite lengthy-so let's hope we don't have to go that route. Our audiologist did say that we have a very good chance at being approved, even more so since Medicaid paid for the first one, not them, so they are only paying for one.